One aspect of the present disclosure is a development of a delivery introducer for a delivery apparatus previously described in WO 2012/038550 (PCT/EP2011/066677), the entire content of which is incorporated herein as an integral part of the current application. The delivery introducer may replace the friction reducer in preferred embodiments of the earlier specification.
While less invasive and arguably less complicated than traditional open-heart surgery involving heart and lung bypass, transcatheter heart valve replacement devices and procedures still face various difficulties. One aspect may be the challenge of accommodating a stent-valve within a narrow diameter catheter. The distal end of the delivery catheter may typically be in the range of 6-8 mm in diameter (18-24 French). The design of a delivery catheter has to address requirements for (i) atraumatic introduction into, navigation and later withdrawal through and from the vasculature, and (ii) support for controlled deployment of the stent-valve. Additional complications relate to the ability to pass the delivery device and stent-valve through a tightly fitting introducer.
Some ideas in the present disclosure have been devised bearing all of the aforementioned issues in mind. It may be desirable (although not essential) to address and/or mitigate at least one of the foregoing issues.
Throughout this description, including the foregoing description of related art, any and all publicly available documents described herein, including any and all U.S. patents, are specifically incorporated by reference herein in their entirety. The foregoing description of related art is not intended in any way as an admission that any of the documents described therein, including pending United States patent applications, are prior art to embodiments according to the present disclosure. Moreover, the description herein of any disadvantages associated with the described products, methods, and/or apparatus, is not intended to limit the disclosure. Indeed, aspects of the disclosed embodiments may include certain features of the described products, methods, and/or apparatus without suffering from their described disadvantages.